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EU shale-gas debate hots up

Depending on whom you talk to, last Friday’s report by the European Commission on regulation of hydraulic fracturing for shale-gas extraction was either a vindication of the oil industry’s position or an urgent warning that oil prospectors are about to poison Europe’s water.

“The study confirmed that existing regulations are adequate,” said Tristan Aspray, European exploration operations manager with Exxon Mobil. The European Commission appeared to share this assessment, saying the study had concluded that “there are no significant gaps in coverage in the current EU legislative framework”.

But Reinhard Bütikofer, a German Green MEP, came away with the opposite impression. “The study clearly highlights the need to consider adjusting EU legislation to take account of concerns with shale gas,” he said, accusing Günther Oettinger, the European commissioner for energy, of “distorting the findings of the Commission’s own research”.

The two different interpretations are symptomatic of the way the debate around so-called fracking has been carried out in Europe, with the facts seemingly supporting two opposite conclusions. The dialogue is only going to become more heated, with no fewer than ten new studies on shale gas expected over the coming months – from legislators, industry, campaign groups and academics. The debate has kicked into high gear, with environmental groups seeing it as their last chance to stop shale-gas exploration in Europe before it gets under way on a large scale.

The public pressure has had a significant effect. In January, Bulgaria enacted a ban on shale-gas drilling following country-wide protests. France had imposed a similar ban last year. Oil industry companies are increasingly worried that the tide of public opinion in Europe is turning against them because of what they say are unsubstantiated claims. They insist that the process of extracting shale gas has already been used for other types of rock for decades, and the protests about it arise from misinformation about the extraction process.

Tight gas

Unlike conventional gas, which is extracted from fairly porous rock, gas from shale deposits needs to be accessed by opening fractures in the rock with a water/chemical mixture – a process known as hydraulic fracturing. The most effective way to do this is to build ‘horizontal wells’, which burrow deep underground and then turn, spraying the mixture into the shale rock through tiny holes.

Knowledge of how to extract shale gas has been available for decades, but until recent technological advances and the rise in gas prices doing so was not economically attractive. Shale-gas extraction has proceeded at a rapid pace in north America over the past decade, with some analysts predicting that within ten years it will make up half of all gas produced in north America. But it is still not known if the shale rock in Europe has the same potential. Oil companies want to begin exploration to determine this, but environmental campaigners want to stop the process before it starts. They say the shale-gas boom in north America has resulted in alarming environmental and health problems.

“The high pressure injection of fracking fluid causes leaks in well-casings, which can get into underground water resources,” says Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Europe.

“We’ve seen that happen several times in the US. Investigations have found more than 750 chemicals in the fracking fluid. And the horizontal fracking disturbs the underground rock formation, because horizontal wells are more likely to encounter cracks in rock.”

But the oil industry says that concerns about chemicals leaking into water supplies are unwarranted, because the site of injection is far below any ground water. “In the hydraulic fracturing process you’re actually fracturing a rock that is typically several kilometres below the surface,” says Aspray. “Those fractures are relatively small, up to 100 metres. They can’t propagate much further than that because there just isn’t enough energy.”

The real concern, he says, is in the section of the well that goes through the top level of soil. “The critical element is to construct the wells so they do not pose a threat to ground water, using multiple layers of cement and steel casing.”

He says the practice of ‘sealing in’ the top level of a well is no different from treating a standard well, a practice that has been developed over decades by the industry and is required by existing regulations. He adds that 99.5% of the solution used for fracturing is water and sand. The chemicals used are in common usage in swimming-pool cleaners, laundry detergent and food additives. They must be kept out of ground water, he says, but they are far from being the ‘toxic’ chemicals described by campaigners.

Burning water

Attention has been particularly focused on shale gas since the release of the 2010 documentary film “Gasland”, which explored cases of ground-water contamination from fracking. The most well-known image from the film is the scene where a man sets his tap water ablaze by lighting a match next to it. But when the Colorado Oil & Gas Conservation Commission conducted an investigation, they found that the man’s water-well had been improperly drilled into a naturally occurring shallow gas deposit, and the contamination had nothing to do with hydraulic fracturing. Yet this image has remained one of the most enduring in the minds of the public when it comes to shale gas.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that fracking does not pose a significant threat to ground water. The European Commission has said that for the moment it is keeping an open mind on the gas, waiting for solid evidence that fracking poses a risk.

But with or without conclusive proof, the public mood is turning increasingly against shale gas, and member states are starting to take unilateral action based on that disquiet. Oil companies have also held back on exploration in response to the public unease. ExxonMobil voluntarily halted drilling a horizontal well in Lower Saxony in Germany after public protest, initiating a study to assess the impacts.

Viable supplies?

In the end, even if exploration goes ahead, it could turn out that Europe’s potential supply of shale gas is not commercially exploitable – all the argument could have been for nothing. But environmental campaigners say the exploration phase must be stopped now before it can lead to eventual extraction.

“The wait-and-see approach of the European institutions will become increasingly untenable,” insists Hauter. With the science about possible side-effects still inconclusive, it may be public opinion that decides whether Europe aborts its first steps down the shale-gas path.

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